For Chinese alchemists, gold held the key to the Elixir, the Eastern equivalent of the Philosopher's Stone.

He loved Rick and gave the best years of his life, now to roistering with him, now to hanging on to his coat-tails.

Renounce all personal pleasures and personal profit. It is all just pennies—or, as my young friend Julia would say, it's a wooden nickel.

From the cot on which he lay uninferant of what might lie ahead in eternal afterlife he watched three pigs poke moist pink slimy snouts obscenely through the warped slats